I’m technically on “vacation” but I am going to sneak away to do a little “work.”

If you’re passionate about what you’re doing, you’ll find the time, make the time and invent the time.

I don’t care if you’re on vacation, if you want to work, then by all means, go for it.

Right now I’m writing from Bensheim, Germany. It’s a beautiful little hillside town south of Frankfurt and north of Heidelberg along the Bergstrasse (mountain road) and Weinstrasse (wine road). My mom and I are traveling from Holland to visit the family she stayed with in 1958 on her exchange abroad program (and where she met my dad).

Vacation means you do what you want to do.

I got up early. I went for a run in the vineyards. It’s ridiculously picturesque: grapes shimmering in the sun, tanned German women walking their dogs, a fresh autumn breeze as I catch my breath running as fast as I can (which is not that fast … ) up through the hills. When I returned back to the house, I still had 15 minutes to do whatever it is I wanted to do.

I can’t wait to get working on it. I have new ideas all the time about how to promote it. I just wanted to jot a few new promotional ideas down this morning before we go visit a nearby town that has a house from 800 A.D. (I added A.D. because that number is just so long ago that it doesn’t even look like a year).

I sneak away downstairs to write out my thoughts and share them with my project partner. I’m on vacation and this is what I want to do. We’ll go sightseeing in a little bit, but now this is what I get to do. This is what I allow myself to do.

In some people’s eyes, I’m on vacation and I’m doing work. For some, that is taboo. I get it. I’m one of those people: I don’t want people to be on vacation and be working. In other words, I don’t want people to be doing what they don’t want to be doing when they’re supposed to be doing what they want to do.

Here’s how I see it and if you don’t see your life this way, you can build towards it: I’m always on vacation and I’m always working.

Explanation of the use of quotation marks in the title.

Vacation is in quotes above because I’m not one to make the great divide between being on vacation and not being on vacation. I actually quite dislike that they’re so far apart for most people.

Work is in quotes because I wanted to make sure that you knew I was doing something valuable so I used the word work to help you out, but it’s in quotes because what I’m doing these days I don’t consider work. Work, in the words of Tom Sawyer, is a thing that a body has to do (but doesn’t want to do). If that’s the case, then neither of those qualify: I don’t have to do it and I want to do it. Not only do I want to do it, I can’t wait to do it. It’s not work for me if it’s so much fun and gives me energy rather than uses it.

I’m technically on “vacation” but I am going to sneak away to do a little “work.” [Bensheim, Germany]